Decision 2005Do8130

The Defendant was running a massage parlor that had hidden rooms with beds where a young female employee massaged the whole body of a male customer. The female employee, usually wearing a short skirt and a short-sleeved tee, would undress the male customer, grab his sexual organ with her hands with lotion on, touch the body part just like engaging in a sexual intercourse, and ultimately let him ejaculate. The issue was whether the act of the female employee in the Defendant’s parlor could be considered as "acts that are similar to sexual intercourse" under Article 2 (1) 1 sub paragraph Na of the Act on the Punishment of Acts of Arranging Sexual Traffic. The Act, which aimed to eradicate prostitution and protect the human rights of the victims of prostitution, did not distinguish “sexual intercourse” from “acts that are similar to sexual intercourse”. The Supreme Court interpreted "acts that are similar to sexual intercourse" as stipulated in the above Act to refer to acts of penetrating the body through the mouth or the anus, or at least acts for gaining sexual satisfaction similar to sexual intercourse. Then the Court went through a comprehensive evaluation of the circumstances, including the place where such act was conducted, the clothes the people were wearing, the body parts that were touched, the specific content of the act, and the degree of the resulting sexual satisfaction to decide whether the female employee’s act could be considered as “acts that are similar to sexual intercourse”. The Supreme Court held that the female employee’s act could be deemed as an act of bodily contact for gaining sexual satisfaction similar to sexual intercourse, and therefore dismissed the appeal by the Defendant.